I woke up at 4:06 am and couldn't go back to sleep - this is why I shouldn't blog when that happens.

It’s going to be a long day.  A bunch of folks who worked on the show yesterday all went out after work last night for a nice dinner and socializing.  It was all fine but to be honest the thing I took away from the whole experience is that I think I’m pretty over hanging out with work people outside of work.  It’s not that I don’t work with nice people, It’s rather that I can’t spend all day with them anymore.

When I was a small boy, living in the middle of North Dakota, I really had no idea of just how in the middle of nowhere we were living.  But thanks to Terraserver, I can gain a whole new appreciation.  Here’s the little country church where we lived.  On the left is the community building (think church basement) where coffee was served and Sunday school was taught, in the middle is the church itself, and the little white building on the right is what used to be the garage.  The house itself used to be between the church and the garage, but someone bought it and moved it into one of the towns nearby*.

This was my entire world as a 3-year old.  The shelter belt on the north and west side where I frequently would go looking for bears and lions and play on the shells of old abandoned cars left out there to rust away, even if I did get lost on occasion.  The single strip of concrete sidewalk between the house, the church, and the community building that I would ride my big wheel on back and forth, back and forth, And the fields surrounding us that were full of sunflowers.  Snowdrifts until June, summer ice cream socials where old ladies gave me free ice cream and old men pitched horseshoes.  No flush toilets in the church itself but rather two outhouses (now demolished) until my dad  - ever the force of modernism – raised the money to add them onto the community building.

Sometimes, I miss the idyllic simplicity of those days.  But then I zoom out and realize just how in the middle of nowhere we were.  And I wonder whether I’d still be there today if we hadn’t moved.

Man I’m tired today…it's going to be a long day.

* I think either to Fessenden (pop. 625) or the bustling metropolis of Hamberg (pop. 28)


Comments

Stacey Pelika said…
Wow. That really is in the middle of nowhere!